President Donald Trump and several key health advisors in his Cabinet held a formal event Wednesday at the White House unveiling new efforts to improve healthcare technology and partnerships with private-sector technology companies.
The ‘Make Health Tech Great Again’ event laid out a new voluntary commitment from several major tech and tech-healthcare firms aimed at developing a better process for digital health record sharing, which Trump admin officials said would ultimately improve health outcomes for Americans. In addition to the commitment, the new health tech efforts will also include the development of personalized tools meant to help patients obtain greater control of their health information to make more informed decisions.
‘For decades, America’s healthcare networks have been overdue for a high-tech upgrade, and that’s what we’re doing. The existing systems are often slow, costly, and incompatible with one another,’ Trump said from the White House during the Wednesday afternoon event. ‘But with today’s announcement, we take a major step to bring health care into the digital age, something that, is absolutely vital. We’ve got to do it. Moving from clipboards and fax machines into a new era of convenience, profitability and speed and, frankly, better health for people.’
The event announcing the Trump administration’s plan to advance a ‘next-generation digital health ecosystem,’ was attended by representatives of companies, including Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, Epic, Oracle, Athena Health, and Noom, who will be participating in the voluntary pledge aimed at improving health record sharing. As part of the pledge, the companies will ‘voluntarily’ share information with each other, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also present at the Wednesday event.
‘For decades, bureaucrats and entrenched interests buried health data and blocked patients from taking control of their health,’ Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in a statement Wednesday ahead of the event. ‘That ends today. We’re tearing down digital walls, returning power to patients, and rebuilding a health system that serves the people. This is how we begin to Make America Healthy Again.’
The Trump administration is partnering with more than 60 companies to bolster how health information is shared electronically, including through the use of apps, and beef up the interoperability of health information networks, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The apps aim to address issues including diabetes and obesity management, and provide beneficiaries with AI assistants to walk through symptoms, provide care options, and assist with scheduling appointments. Other functions that the technology aims to solve are providing digital check-ins to streamline services and cut down on paper intake forms.
‘It gives [patients] a sense of responsibility and allows them to measure the interventions if they change their diet, if they change their exercise, it can show you how many steps you took today, it can tell you if your glucose is spiking, and all of that information will now be available to American citizens,’ Kennedy said Wednesday.
The White House event is a follow-up to the request for information notice that the CMS posted in May requesting information from stakeholders on ways to beef up health technology interoperability.
Other technological advances on the health front include plans for CMS to launch an app library on Medicare.gov to best direct beneficiaries to the right digital health tools, according to CMS.
‘The average Americans are tired. They’re tired of waiting for a doctor’s appointment. They’re tired of waiting for the surprise of what your hospital bill is going to offer. That’s being addressed,’ CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz added Wednesday.
‘They’re tired of waiting for access to their medical records. You own your medical records, they’re yours. Why you can’t have access to them is a stunning reality in modern-day America,’ Oz continued. ‘They’re also tired of waiting for Washington to take action. And this president early on emphatically stated that wasn’t going to happen anymore. And today we made that vision into a reality.’